Deval Tibrewalla
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

With this whole retro movement, its a bother these days to figure our whats really old and whats just made to look like old. Perhaps that is the reason why I am deja vuing all over the place lately. Take for instance something I wrote a couple of years ago.

The pink papers are pretty schizophrenic these days. On one hand we’ve have had more black swan events since the financial crisis of 08. On the other hand, stock markets are on a tear, bond markets are on a tear and the word bubble no longer even sounds bad anymore.

Which is strange cos it seems just like a couple of years ago that we came out of it. Oh, wait. It was a couple of years ago. Comparing something to 1929 makes for good drama but what is really dramatic is when you compare a crisis to a one just a while ago. And that one was called the Biggest That We Have Ever Seen.

Fact is, indeed stranger than fiction.

Money gushed in the system like water gushing about in the Titanic (and we know from our knowledge of applied maths that IF SYSTEM = TITANIC, then WE = _____ ) and all was well it seems. However like any decent self respecting iceberg, the trouble was actually only partly visible while the rest lurked beneath sea level fattening itself like Bertie Wooster at one of Anatole’s dinners.

This rescue by money printing became quite a trend and spread across the world like the latest Harry Potter book and most Governments gave in to its magical powers. However, it is for a reason that JK Rowling cautioned against using magic with muggles. Our central banks are no Gringotts and even though some of our central bankers look like Goblins, they are hardly as steadfast in their approach.

Thus the global oceans roared in giant waves of cash which only went to the banks and big businesses via the banks, low tide or high tide. However, with all this money a strange thing happened, no one was getting rich. It is a matter of fundamental disbelief for many people and they wonder where all this money went if the banks are still looking for it.

I`d require to be a wizard myself to answer that, though the amount of salaries some of these folk get may point to a direction. But you know what, banker bashing aside, the sums of bailout money were so enormous that even the well machined digestive systems that make bankers up would`nt be able to wolf all of it down.

So now we are in a situation where the top 50 of the worlds nations have a problem of too much debt. Some like Greece have too much debt. Some like China, have too much debt, too much inflation and too many bubbles. And this goes on like a game of drumsticks where for each country you can add another problem.

Add to this slowing growth in each of the countries except maybe Indonesia and Vietnam and you have a problem that even the mighty Jeeves would not be able to solve by pacing the corridor or using his fish fortified brain.

So whats to be done? Well, a chap cant just Right Ho and go back to work when there is a problem of this sort on your hands can he? So one of the classes I dropped in at Harvard asked its students to sort the global financial crisis using systems thinking. I was intrigued… till the time the students started playing racquetball with the hackneyed “bankers shouldnt be greedy” etc. instead of using any real thought. Our generation is a child of growth and we are nearly genetically incapable of dealing with a situation such as this.

Like the Austrian saying goes, The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious. But thats only because no one is serious about solving this.

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Deval Tibrewalla

Written by

Armchair Thinker. Wannabe Writer. Amateur Rallyist. Mostly Found at Airports. Still finding everything else.

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